


Forgive Me, my Darling Jude

by HighLadyOfRomanceAndAngst



Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:07:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26134699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HighLadyOfRomanceAndAngst/pseuds/HighLadyOfRomanceAndAngst
Summary: Five years after her banishment, Jude is married and with children, healing from the scars of the past. Jude and her husband are enjoying a morning to themselves, when a knock comes at the door. When the door opens, Jude must face her past and decide which path to take.
Relationships: Jude Duarte/Cardan Greenbriar
Comments: 5
Kudos: 46





	Forgive Me, my Darling Jude

_ Jude _

At seven in the morning, all Jude wanted to do was snuggle into the sheets with her husband for an extra minute before the children woke up. However, her husband, Sam, was currently fast asleep, drool pooling out onto his pillow. She studied him, looking at his sleep mussed russet hair, and dark brown skin. He was perfect, save the drool dripping out of his mouth. With one finger Jude gently reached out to wipe it away, accidentally sticking her finger in his mouth as he shifted in his sleep. 

Sam’s chocolate brown eyes opened sleepily, amused at the predicament. “This wasn’t how I thought I’d start my morning, but I’m not complaining,” he murmured, proceeding to flick his tongue against her skin. Bastard.

She hissed, quickly pulling her finger out before he got any more ideas. “There was drool seeping out of your mouth! I only intended to wipe it away as a courtesy gesture!” Huffing to herself, she promptly flipped over to the other side of the bed.

Behind her she heard Sam chuckle, and then the sound of the mattress squeaking as he moved closer to her. His arms wrapped around her middle, pulling her close to him. Though they were both clothed, the embrace felt very intimate as he rested his chin on her head. “Mi corazón, have I told you lately how much I love you?” A grin slowly began to spread across Jude’s face. “And how much you need to shower?” And just like that, she scowled.

As if knowing how her facial expression changed, his hands came up to run down her shoulders, lightly, sending pinpricks of ecstasy flowing through her. The gentle contact was her favorite part of the morning, when it was just Sam and Jude, and no children. “I jest, I jest! You smell heavenly.” Emphasizing his point, he inhaled near her hairline. “Just like wildflowers and sunshine.” His hands stopped near her elbows, drawing small circles round and round.

Closing her eyes, she focused solely on Sam, wanting to enjoy every moment. “The sun doesn’t have a smell.”

“Untrue, you are what I imagine the sun smells like. You are the center of my world. And I suppose it doesn’t hurt that you’re hot enough to  _ be  _ the sun.”

Jude groaned and shoved herself out of his arms, glaring down at him. “That was the worst pick-up line I have ever heard.”

“I don’t need to pick you up, you’re already mine.” He blew her a kiss.

Rolling her eyes, Jude opened her mouth to respond, but was interrupted by the sound of running footsteps outside of the bedroom. The door slowly opened up, revealing Jude’s three children, still in their night clothes, with wide eyes. Her eldest, Ronan, determined himself the leader to speak up. The twins, Sofia and Ava, huddled behind their elder brother, seemingly terrified of something.

Before Ronan responded, Jude got a terrible feeling in her chest. A feeling that her past was coming back to haunt her. And that history was about to repeat itself.

“Darlings, why do you look like deer caught in the headlights?” Her husband asked, now sitting up, throwing his legs over the side to go to their children. He was, thankfully, wearing pants.

Jude was frozen in place, her mind racing as to how he had found them. How had he discovered where she lived? Vivi didn’t even know.

“A strange man is at the door,” Ronan said in a hushed tone.

It was Cardan. She knew it.

It was too early for this shit.

She uttered a string of curse words not meant for young ears.

_ Cardan _

For the first time in five years, Cardan was about to see his wife. He nervously checked his reflection in the window, making sure his hair was perfect. This day would be perfect. Jude would return to Elfhame with him, and then they could rule together, as High King and Queen. Without his Jude, he was unbelievably lost. He couldn’t handle the pressures of court if she was not by his side.

He had even brought a crown for her, as an apology. Cardan hoped she still loved him, otherwise this was about to be very awkward. 

But he couldn’t stop thinking about the little boy who had answered the door. The boy resembled him, and around five years old. Was the boy… no that was impossible. It was only one time. It didn’t happen that fast. At least, that’s what he’d been told

Cardan was spared from his thoughts as the front door opened, and Jude’s stormy face greeted him. She looked beautiful. “What are you doing here, Cardan.” Behind her, three children gathered around her legs, and farther back in the room, he saw a man with a worried expression on his bland human face.

“To see you, what other reason would I have for visiting the mortal lands.” There was a tug on the hem of his tunic. He looked down to see the boy looking up at him with wide, black eyes. His eyes.

“Mister, are you a prince? I’ve read all about them in books and you have a crown.”

Cardan smiled indulgently at the child. “Better than a Prince. I’m a King. Would you like to try my crown on?”

“Yes!”

“No, you will do no such thing, Ronan,” Jude snapped, pushing the kid behind her. As soon as the child’s name slipped out of Jude’s mouth, horror entered her expression. As if she didn’t want him to know. As if it was meant to be a secret.

Taking a step closer, so they were mere inches apart, Cardan cocked his head, peering into Jude’s brown eyes, noticing how much older and wiser they seemed. And happier. “May I come in?”

“Can he, mommy? Please?” Ronan begged behind them.

Jude stared him straight in the face, unwilling to back down. It was just one of the many things he loved about her. “If I say I’m sorry, will you let me cross the threshold?”

All emotion was wiped clean from her face at his words. “You destroyed my life, and you think saying sorry will fix it?” She breathed under her breath, so quiet he had to strain his ears, “No. You may not.” Her expression turned fierce, a mother bear protecting what she loved from an intruder. Him.

The man he had seen in the shadows earlier now stepped forwards, placing a hand on Jude’s shoulder. “Leave my wife alone, haven’t you done enough damage to her?”

Wife.  _ His  _ wife. This was about to get interesting. Cardan flicked his gaze to Jude, noticing how she shut her eyes at her  _ husband’s  _ words. “Your wife? My, my, Jude, you’ve certainly been busy. And here I thought you already exchanged vows.”

“Cardan, please-”

“I thought you loved me.”

There was silence now, from both of them. Jude merely opened the door wider, a defeated slump to her shoulders. The boy, Ronan, cheered when Cardan stepped over the threshold. “Jude, I don’t like this,” her  _ husband  _ said, in an annoyingly worried tone.

Cardan smirked at the man, the man who dared called Jude his wife. “You don’t have to. You’ll be out of the picture soon enough.” Cardan looked around the home, noting the family portraits, the wedding photos, the warmth radiating out of the walls. It felt like a place where family didn’t stab each other in the back at the first opportunity. Literally. 

The man stepped in front of Jude, pushing her behind him, as though she needed protection. If anything, he was the one who needed protection. He was willing to bet the man didn’t know the half of Jude’s past. The bloodthirsty Queen who manipulated every situation to her advantage to gain more power, her ambitions flying higher with each passing day. “If you harm Jude, or my children, you will regret ever coming here.”

_ His  _ children, so there was no way that the boy was his. Cardan was oddly disappointed. “I’m leaving with Jude or I’m not leaving at all.” He turned his head towards his Jude. “Darling, won’t you come home with me?” He stretched out a hand to the woman who held the shambles of his heart.

Jude crossed her arms. “I cannot. I’m banished, or have you forgotten that as you conveniently failed to remember how deeply you betrayed me at the first opportunity?”

Here came the fun part, where he revealed everything in front of Jude’s husband. His lips stretched wide, teeth gleaming in the low lighting. “You seem to have forgotten the vows we exchanged, and how we consummated it that night.” Her husband looked on stonily. Cardan examined his nails. “Marriage to a King is no small thing, in fact, there’s a little thing that allows you to be elevated. You, my dearest Jude, are the Queen. Your bag of tricks finally ran out and I picked up the remnants. I learned from you, you see. You only need to be pardoned by the crown. With your marriage to me, you are Queen.”

“If you’re a Queen, mommy, does that mean I’m a prince?” Ronan excitedly asked from his place beside Jude.

Jude looked at Cardan with no emotion, stroking the top of her son’s head. “Yes, I suppose it does. Having a King and Queen for parents often does that.”

“Yes! I can’t wait to tell the kids at school!”

Cardan felt the blood drain from his face as his suspicions were confirmed. “Are-are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

The tension in the air was so thick you could cut it with a knife. The kids seemed oblivious to all. “Ronan is your son. Ava and Sofia are not.”

“Jude, is it wise to tell him that? Who knows what he’ll do with that information.”

“Sam-” Jude started.

“What is one child to me? I care nothing for him, only my Jude.”

Sam snarled, getting right up in Cardan’s face. “Jude isn’t yours. She never was, and never will be. The sooner you understand that, the sooner you can leave my family alone.”

The fool had no idea to whom he was speaking. He wondered just how much she had revealed to him. Surely she hadn’t told him everything. Jude didn’t let people in like that. Once she had let him in, and he had used the opportunity to show her they were evenly matched, mind-mind. 

Jude’s hand snaked around Sam’s arm, drawing him away from Cardan. “Sam, can you give us a moment alone, please.”

Her husband looked into Jude’s face and found her pleading eyes looking back at him. He loosed a breath and ran his fingers through his hair. “This wasn’t what I thought marriage would be like. Sofia, Ava, Ronan, come with me for a moment.” He left the room with the kids in tow and shut the door to a bedroom.

Now it was just him and Jude. Endless words rose up between them, as though they were two figures on a broken bridge with Cardan trying to fix it, while Jude laughed at him. “Do you love him?”

Silence greeted him. Only the children’s giggles from behind the door alerted Cardan that he was, not, in fact, in a graveyard. The silence was as haunting as a ghost’s final resting place. The way she stared at him, as if she didn’t know him, hurt Cardan more than he thought it would. Jealousy was a festering wound, the more you picked at it, the more it bled. 

“Yes, very much. While I’ve been away from Faerie, I never realized how different it was here. It was a shock to find that I quite liked the Mortal Lands and found no sorrow that I was to stay here. At first it seemed like a punishment, but now it has been a blessing.” Jude took on a love-struck expression that made Cardan sick to his stomach.

“Did you ever love me?” He asked softly under his breath, daring to lightly run his fingers down her face. Her eyelids fluttered in response to his touch. Angling his head to study her, he wondered at how easily she could turn her emotions on and off like a lightswitch.

“Love is a dangerous word.” Jude reached up and clutched his hand. At first, endearing, but as her grip began to tighten, Cardan knew he was about to see the wrath of Jude Durate. She opened her eyes, where he met only a razor sharp focus. “If I told you I only used you for power, what would you say? If I told you I loved you so much that I feared my heart would burst, what would you say?” His fingers strained to escape her iron-clad grip. Any harder and she would break his bones. “Does it matter what I felt? You certainly didn’t seem to take that into consideration when you humiliated me in front of the Court. What difference did it make to you, when you are the High King, and no one matters but you. Let me tell you this, I did love you. Once.”

His fingers snapped. A broken cry escaped his lips, though she didn’t seem to hear it, not as she was lost in her passionate speech. As she raised up on her toes to whisper in his ear, Cardan wondered how he ever thought he could match her. “It was a mistake. You were my biggest mistake.” She released his hand and stepped back, arms crossed.

Cardan staggered back, clutching his broken hand to his chest. “I still love you. All the stars have winked out in your absence, I beg you to return so that the shadows may disperse. You are the only source of light in my life. Please, return with me.”

There was no emotion on her face, wiped clean like a blank canvas. “You have no one to blame but yourself.”

The door cracked open and the twins bolted out, laughing as they proudly carried an object in their hands, staggering with the weight. It looked like… a sword. And not just any sword, Nightfell. Jude’s choice of weapon. Sam hurriedly dashed out behind them with a panicked expression on his face. “Ava! Sofia! What have I told you about playing with weapons? They’re too dangerous for young hands.” He plucked it from their hands, sighing as he went. As if realizing he had an audience, he looked up at the two of them, in close proximity, and he just looked… tired. Placing the sword out of reach from the twins, he slowly bent his head and swallowed.

“Sam,” Jude whispered.

Sam raised his head up and looked at Jude with a sad smile. “If you go with him, I understand why you would want to. He’s a Faerie in a magical land from fairytales, the place where you grew up. If you wish to go, I won’t stop you. After all, what can I offer you other than my heart? Do you not wish to be waited on hand and foot at a castle, versus working yourself to the bone in our small home?”

Jude’s eyes began to water, and forgetting as though Cardan was even there, she rushed into Sam’s arms, burying herself against his chest. His arms wrapped tightly around her, his head resting on the top of her hair. “All I ever wanted was you. I love  _ you _ . I’m not ever leaving, not for the memory of the childhood that scarred me in more ways than one.” She pulled back to look into his eyes. Cardan’s jealous heart rose up into his throat, red entering his vision. He was about to do something very stupid. “You are my home, no matter where we go. It is not Faerie, not anymore.”

Cardan’s uninjured hand began to creep towards his jacket, where he stored a hidden dagger. A dagger that was sharp enough to pierce a heart. He’d been training with the Court of Shadows these past few years, and his aim was impeccable. So as the two lovers held each other in their arms, Cardan flung the knife as fast and as hard as he could for Sam’s chest. If he was gone, Jude would have no choice but to return with him.

But Jude saw the knife coming. She flung herself in the path of the dagger, where it landed true, into her heart. Cardan’s world narrowed to the blood pouring out of her chest, staining the white blouse she had donned. Distantly he walked over to her in a trance, not seeing how her husband’s face went white with anger, nor the children screaming, drenched in their mother’s blood as they rushed around her.

Sam gripped Cardan’s lapels with his hand, yelling in his face. Cardan didn’t hear him, his focus was on his darling Jude, bleeding out onto the floor. Cardan did the thing that was natural for him. He pulled another knife out and stabbed the man in the small of his back. If he was going to destroy himself, the other man was going with him. 

Sam slumped to the floor at Jude’s feet, his eyes glassy, unseeing. Already his hair was soaking up the blood pooling out from Jude. The children were crying, begging their father to wake up. 

Cardan had broken this family.

He knelt next to Jude and held her icy-cold palm in his. Miraculously, she was still alive. “I’m so sorry. I-I didn’t mean- this wasn’t supposed to happen. We were going to be happy together. You and me, just like it’s always been. That’s all I wanted,” Cardan’s voice broke, tears now pouring out in great rivulets down his skin. 

With great difficulty, Jude opened her mouth. “You were never the villain in my story, Cardan. You have always held goodness in your heart. You must go on, as it seems that my tale has come to an end.” She stretched up her blood-stricken hand to his hair. “When we were younger, I fell in love with the boy who showed kindness in the smallest of ways. Though you say your heart is but embers, don’t let the light go out.” Her children were still crowded around their father, tears pouring down their little faces. “ All I ask is that you don’t bury me in Faerie. I want to be laid to rest next to my parents. And please, take care of my children. Don’t give them the childhood I had. Ronan is my legacy, as he is yours, and the heir to the Greenbriar throne.” Jude coughed, specks of red flying out. “Make sure they don’t forget me.”

With trembling hands, Cardan moved his fingers to her face and cupped her cheek. “You’re not going to die. I-I can save you! Hold on!” He shoved every healing spell he knew into her chest, light wildly flaring out of his touch, not noticing how she had gone still, or the garden that had erupted under his touch, flowers of every kind sprouting up from the wood flooring. Before long, the house was overtaken by greenery and Jude’s final resting place was a garden of Cardan’s own creation. “Just… one… more. Stay with me!” Finally he looked at her, and saw the unnatural stillness of death. She was gone. His light died, as the darkness crept in once more.

Jude Durate, High Queen of Elfhame, Queen of his heart, was dead. His darling Jude was gone, and it was his fault.

He glanced over at her children who were looking at him with heartbroken expressions, like lost little lambs in a den of wolves. “Sorry doesn’t really help here, does it.”

Cardan didn’t expect them to answer him, and they didn’t. “Come with me, and I will show you a place full of magic, where fairytales come to life. You can wear the finest clothing available, and sit on a throne. You will be elevated to royalty.” He offered them a hand, a hand still caked in their mother’s blood. 

Cautiously, but unsure of any other lifeline, and drawn in by his words, they took his hand. Biting back the terror and fear of what his life now meant, he brought Jude’s lifeless body with. Despite her words, Jude was to be buried at the Greenbriar mausoleum, where all the Queens before her dwelled. Against her final wishes perhaps, but he did not wish for her to be so far away. One final, selfish desire.

Cardan brought the children to Jude’s old rooms at the palace, where he called for Tatterfell, who dressed and bathed the children. She promised to look after them while he went to give Jude a proper burial.

Someone had cleaned her up, so that blood did not cake her skin, her clothing no longer torn. She was a Queen he could not reach, as she was lost to the void of the Afterlife, a star in the sky winking down at him.

He placed her sword in her hands and as she was entombed, Cardan vowed to himself he would make Faerie a better place in Jude’s memory.

From that day forward, it was decreed a crime against the crown to abuse mortals and glamour them against their will. Any found guilty immediately faced Cardan, where they met no mercy. The offenders were quickly put to death. No mortal would ever suffer the fate of Jude again.

Every Sunday of the month, Cardan visited Jude, and told her everything she had missed. Every detail, no matter how small, echoed in the walls of the mausoleum. 

And as the years passed by, Cardan made sure Ronan, Sofia, and Ava were given the best treatment and education the crown could offer. He raised them as his own children, but never kept their past a secret. They knew Cardan had killed their parents. Sofia and Ava were willing to forgive Cardan as they got older, as they were much too young to fully remember. But Ronan was always distant. Some days he was warm and friendly towards him, others, an impassive stone. 

Cardan didn’t blame him.

Cardan hated himself more than ever, and slowly let the grief devour him. He even refused to let his hand fully heal, as a reminder of the cost of jealousy.

Though he was a just ruler to his subjects, he never let himself forget what he had done. He made sure Jude was never forgotten. Statues were erected in her honor, her would-be crown seated on the throne next to his, as a reminder that the Mortal Queen still lived.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_ Ronan _

Fifteen years after Jude’s death, his father sat in his room, looking into the flames of the fireplace with a blank expression. Ronan crouched in front of him, searching for the father who had raised him and given him a childhood away from the corruption of Court. But no matter how many times Ronan said his name, or pleaded with him, he would not rise.

Under his breath he kept repeating, “Forgive me, my Darling Jude. Forgive me. I cannot forgive myself.” Again and again and again until his voice grew hoarse, but even then, he continued the mantra without pause, not even for food or water. 

Day by day he wasted away until he was a shell of who he used to be. He ignored all signs of life, until the last day, when four days had passed, and his father moved his gaze to Ronan. “You have her smile, and her kindness. I’m thankful I got to see them again.” Then promptly slumped in the chair, eyes looking forever towards the fire, begging for forgiveness. Suddenly Ronan was five years old again, and screaming for Sam and his mother to wake up. He saw the blood coating the walls of their small home, and the garden that had sprouted as Cardan attempted to save his mother. But here he was, aged twenty, and an orphan once again.

Grief and guilt had killed as surely as a blade. 

Ronan was immediately declared the High King and took up his father’s mantle and legacy. 

He would never forget the man who read him stories long past his bedtime, nor the woman who taught him to never give up. His parents, the High King and Queen, left him a clear road to follow, and he took it, in their honor. Neither would ever be forgotten to the rot of time, he would make sure of it.


End file.
